AI has the potential to automate tasks and displace jobs in the creative industries. There are also ethical concerns about the authenticity and ownership of AI-generated works of art. It’s important for artists and creatives to stay informed about AI and engage in discussions about ethical considerations.
These previous piece of 3 sentences was written by ChatGPT. It’s short, informative and has all the major problems of AI. Or does it?
For many this is a simple problem of technocratic ethics. According to many techno-utopianists I as an artist should “adapt or die”. I think the best answer to this could be a manifesto written back in 1998 by people who called themselves technorealists.
The technology isn’t saint and we know that it’s not only create copy of an artwork, but it also removes watermarks and creates deep fakes.
As I was witnessing how fast AI tools unfolding for the public to use, literally for everything. I found myself thinking why people get so excited about it? It seems the main reason is the ease of use and availability of hight value result. To put it simply, it’s a freebie! Even if the result is clearly a compilation of copyright infringement it’s a freebie. I would even say that most of the folks who tried Midjourney could say that they have this sort of gut feeling that, the result is a bargain. That they would never get the same result otherwise this cheap. So why would artists comply with this? Why should we be complicit?
As for Generative AI I see how such words as “machine learning” or “training” could make an impression of some sort of personality. People now in all seriousness compare it to real artist and how they do their artwork. Generative AI is a collage tool built to be a parasite in the art world. Please be careful when comparing it to real people.
Now imagine this freebie is getting used by business. Imagine a business entity is hiring a collage tool instead of real artists to pitch a game idea? Is there any way to protect these artists? An image above is a set of AI-generated game assets done in Midjourney V.4.
Many different art communities are struggling right now with this ethical conundrum. I really like how artists stood together for their rights particular on ArtStation. See the illustrations above that were made in protest to policy at ArtStation. Many different artist across all spectrum of creative professional field are now talking about that.
As a very good example of this kind of talk I want to share this one by Stan Prokopenko (Proko), Steven Zapata and Karla Ortiz.
Cover image from Terminator 2 John Connor’s Parents scene
Principles of Technorealism
“Unprecedented open-source software piracy” lawsuit
Battle ArtStation with its content creators
Advocacy for human artists
Full list of all AI tools available for general public
The Washington Post about the stolen art
